Contents

Standard One

Collect/review written sample of research topic in students’ own words.

Standard 1.1.a

Use "concept maps" or "mind maps" to break topics down into smaller pieces and begin to examine relationships between those pieces.

Standard 1.1.a

Use in-class exercises showing the progress from a broad topic to a specific research question.

Standard 1.1.a

Student compares and contrasts the type of information found in encyclopedias, internet, journals, and popular magazines.

Standard 1.1.d

Student uses a general science encyclopedia such as the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology to find basic information on the topic.

Standard 1.1.d

Keyword search in DB with broad topic and show how find more focused topic from search results.

Standard 1.1.e

Students document a process of search strategies that show a refinement in the search process.

Standard 1.1.e

Students use "Concept Maps" or "Mind Maps" to focus and refine their topics.

Standard 1.1.e

Focused Listing; Students lists keywords and concepts that describe all aspects of the information need.

Standard 1.1.f

Explore need for controlled vocabulary by finding synonyms (chemical compounds and animal/plant names are good for this).

Standard 1.1.f

Standard Two

Standard Three

TEACHING TIPS

STANDARDS

Assign articles to be summarized by the student and shared with the others in the class.

Standard 3.1.c

Provide quotes from science articles written in the popular media, ask students to decide if they are based on fact, point of view or opinion. Ask them to back up their answer with another source or a counter example.

Ask students to find an article on a science topic in the popular press (radio, TV, or newspaper), then to verify the data from a different source.

Standard 3.2.e

Have the students find out what else has been written by an author, using various finding tools.

Standard 3.2.g

Have students decide and report how they would test the validity of results, i.e. what activity would convince them the article results are valid.

Standard 3.4.d

Demonstrate an iterative searching process with new keywords found in abstracts or subject headings of original results. For a medical topic, perhaps use the Medical Subject Heading "neoplasms" as an example of another term for cancer.

Standard 3.6.b

Have students do a search at the beginning of a semester and at the end as well. Ask them to compare their results and how they may have changed their strategy over the course of the semester.

Standard 3.7.b

Standard Four

TEACHING TIPS

STANDARDS

Construct a lesson on scientific publishing and open-access journals. Have the students look up journal prices for several titles. Explore sites like PLoS, BioMedCentral, and PubMedCentral and discuss how these fit within the realm of scientific publishing.

Standard 4.1.b

Introduce citation style of appropriate discipline, perhaps in context of a bibliographic management software package. Have the students sign up for their own account, transfer citations into the software, and format a bibliography in the appropriate style.

Standard 4.3.a

Discuss a variety of resources within the appropriate discipline. Demonstrate one journal article database and then provide an exercise for the students to do in another database to transfer their skills. Require the students to find at least one book, website, encyclopedia entry, journal article, conference proceeding, patent, and any other relevant resource on their topic.

Standard 4.4.a

Standard Five

TEACHING TIPS

STANDARDS

Teach students about Web of Science/Scopus/Google Scholar tracking of citations and cited references. Give them an assignment to look up their professor in a cited reference search.

Standard 5.2.a

Demonstrate resources like Faculty of 1000 Biology and Medicine, and discuss their value in relation to traditional databases.

Standard 5.2.a

Introduce students to email alerts in a database of choice. Give them time to set up an alert themselves.

Standard 5.2.a

Present the students with two issues, one from a review journal and one from a regular journal. Have the students compare the two issues and discuss the differences between them and how they might be useful.

Standard 5.2.b

Instruct the students about citation management tools, like the “print, email, save, export” options in EBSCO and programs such as RefWorks and EndNoteWeb. Give the students an assignment to create a bibliography with bibliographic management software, using three sources.

Standard 5.2.c

Discuss rules of ILL when use.

Standard 5.4.b

Show multiple methods to find the same piece of information. How library databases/internet can save or waste time.

Standard 5.4.b

Some databases offer suggestions/related terms – other search engines may not. Demonstrate this feature to students.

Standard 5.4.b

Complete search strategy worksheet which includes timeline for their research.

Standard 5.4.c

Discussion. What if you find the perfect article, but it is in a language that you cannot read. What is translation going to cost you? Are you willing to pay? Discuss the trade off of value and time.